• Great Family Film Poll: Oliver!

    From Your Name@21:1/5 to All on Fri Mar 25 18:00:45 2016
    Over the Christmas / New Year holiday time the New Zealand Herald
    newspaper ran this series of articles with journalists giving their
    suggestions for New Zealand's favourite family film for The Great
    Family Film Poll ...


    *Oliver!*
    When I was a kid, we didn't have animated ice princesses
    screaming "Let it go". No, we had gangs of Victorian
    street urchins and their masters, all singing about
    petty thievery, child labour and malnourishment.

    Ah, yes, the good old days of classic British cinema.

    I'm not sure when I first saw Oliver! on the big screen.
    It certainly would have been later than 1968 when it
    first came out.

    But it's stuck with me, this film of the stage musical
    of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.

    It was thrilling, frightening, grim, violent. But it
    sure had great tunes. Still does.

    It had some terrific faces and voices among the adult
    cast, too. Ron Moody as Fagin, Oliver Reed as Bill
    Sikes and Harry Secombe as Bumble, the ogre who stares
    down Oliver when he makes his request for a second
    helping of orphanage gruel.

    While its kid stars - including Mark Lester as Oliver,
    Jack Wild as the Artful Dodger - made you want to join
    their gang-as-chorus line singing Consider Yourself,
    Food Glorious Food or You've Got to Pick a Pocket or
    Two.

    It remains a great introduction to musicals and the
    world of Charles Dickens, too. Yes, it might look a bit
    dusty these days but Oliver! is a classic and a good
    way to convince boys and girls that musicals don't have
    to be about animated ice princesses either.

    They should see the Oscar-winning original before the
    forthcoming remake by the folks who gave us the 2012
    version of Les Miserables. Russell Crowe as Fagin? Hugh
    Jackman as Sikes? Quite.

    - Russell Baillie, New Zealand Herald Entertainment Editor
    7 January, 2016

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